Big brain evolution: brain size and intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, March 30, 2018, 13:02 (2220 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The brain is not the lone source of thought in life. I've been very clear. The s/s/c must use the brain to produce thought in life. If the s/s/c has a thought it must produce it through the brain which then becomes the direct source as it implements living thought, which I distinguish from thought after death.
And later:
I am not contradicting myself. As a receiver the brain is a broadcaster (implementer) of the s/s/c thoughts. Does that help you understand my point of view? Of course the brain is material, but entirely necessary in the process.

dhw: At last a glimmer of light. You have now repeated precisely the point that I keep making to you. In dualism the s/s/c provides the thought and the brain IMPLEMENTS it. Of course the two are entirely necessary in life, but the brain is not the SOURCE of living thought. The s/s/c is the SOURCE, and the brain is the receiver that IMPLEMENTS the thought. Consequently it is a contradiction for a dualist to claim that the s/s/c cannot THINK without the brain. Its thoughts cannot be IMPLEMENTED without the brain. And therefore it is a contradiction for a dualist to claim that pre-sapiens’ s/s/c could not have THOUGHT of new concepts if his brain had not already expanded. He could not have IMPLEMENTED his new thoughts until his brain had expanded.

DAVID: No glimmer of light. You accept my point of view that the the s/s/c is required in life to use the brain to create and express thought. But the s/s/c is also the living me and is not separate from me.

No, I do not accept the view in your second sentence. Dualism means that the s/s/c CREATES thought, and uses the receiver brain to express/implement it. Yes, the living “me” is the thinking s/s/c, and you believe that it survives the death of the brain. Therefore the brain cannot be the creator of thought.

DAVID: I am a material me managing to create an immaterial structure of my personality starting at birth.

If you believe that the material you creates your immaterial personality, you are a materialist. In your dualistic guise, you even tell us that the consciousness of the s/s/c is part of your immaterial God’s immaterial consciousness, i.e. it is not a product of the material self.

DAVID: In life the s/s/c cannot think without the functional brain to use. The s/s/c can only think without a brain when it changes form in NDE's or death, two different realities. This view is not inconsistent with my position that bigger brains have better thoughts, when used by the s/s/c to create them controlled by living personalities of earlier forms.

NDEs and the belief in a soul that lives on after death are integral to the concept of dualism, i.e. that IN LIFE there are two separate elements that work together: the soul and the body; the mind and the brain. There is no dualism in death (indeed there may be nothing at all in death), and if bigger brains have better thoughts, then there is no dualism in life. Yes, the s/s/c uses the brain. As you acknowledged in the two quotes above, it uses the brain to IMPLEMENT its thoughts, not to create them. And yes, the s/s/c IS the living personality, which dualists believe is the immaterial living, conscious, THINKING “me” which survives death.